W3 Total Cache Settings – Configure & Optimize Your Website

What is “W3 Total Cache”

W3 Total Cache is a speed optimization plugin which can improve your visitor’s experience by increasing the speed of your WordPress site. It is among the most famous and widely used cache plugins for WordPress sites. This post covers all aspects related to w3 total cache regarding the importance of cache plugins, alternatives, properly configuring W3 Total Cache settings for maximum web page optimization. By the end of the post, your site will be much faster than earlier.

Why Do I Need A Cache Plugin & Why Website Speed Is So Important?

You need a cache plugin to increase your website speed. The speed of the website is essential for a better experience for visitors and SERP. Search Engines like Google measure the website’s speed in ranking it in search results. A faster website is more likely to rank above the slow site. Although site speed is not the only factor for the ranking but surely it is among the important ones. Here

What are other alternatives to W3TC?

If you want to try the other cache plugins before using W3TC, here are some real alternatives:

Why W3TC is best among all cache plugins?

As stated by W3TC team, w3 total cache plugin can increase your site speed up to ten times.

Used by many big companies like mashable.com, makeuseof.com, kiss925.com.

Recommended by many hosting companies including Host Gator, Media Temple.

Offers so many features in a single window like page cache, browser cache, minify which others plugins do not provide.

Most importantly, when I personally used both WP super cache & w3 total cache, my site’s speed was much faster with w3 total cache.

Here is a performance report generated of this site from gtmetrix

Installing W3 Total Cache

(Uninstall other cache plugin if you have one installed earlier)

Install w3 total cache the same way as you install other WordPress plugins. Download the plugin, upload it and activate it. Anyhow if you do not know, here are the quick steps:
1). Download the plugin
2). Upload it through : Plugins -> Add New -> Upload -> Choose File -> Install.
3). Activate the plugin : Plugins -> Installed Plugins -> Activate (w3 total cache).

Configuring W3 Total Cache Settings?

W3 total cache configuration could be a bit confusing if you are a WordPress beginner or using this plugin for the first time. To make things easier for you, I have included the XML/PHP File containing all the w3 total cache settings.

You can simply import all the settings by uploading the file via Performance -> General Settings -> Import / Export Settings (at the bottom). Still, here are all the settings step by step:

Page Cache – Purge Policy

No changes

Page Cache – Advanced

No Changes

3. W3TC Minify Settings

Minify can increase your site speed by removing the unnecessary comments and spaces from your Html source files. Please keep in mind that this function may cause a crash of your site sometimes. I would recommend you to consult your hosting provider before using this function.

to confirm its proper working. To confirm the speed optimization of your website after installing this plugin; Go to Pingdom Tools and check the speed of your website once again. My website’s speed jumped to 91% from 39% earlier. I am sure that it will be increased for yours too.

What Else

Sometimes a wrong host can also contribute towards slow speed of your site. So it is crucial that you also choose some best WordPress based hosting along with cache plugin.

Do let me know what increase you got to your website. If you face any issues, feel free to reach me anytime.

Recently I had an issue with my slider (Theia Post Slider). Where the styles for the buttons weren’t loading. I tried every possible permutation and combination. But this worked – Minify – CSS – Enable (Uncheck). I was hoping there is another way around it.

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Thanks for your guide. I was wondering though, what about the security vulnerabilities that this plug-in had and that many people complained about? I know that happened already some time ago and I assume the plug-in´s author already fixed those issues but I´d like to be sure before installing it.

I was firstly using wp super cache and suddenly came across your blog and tried installing and configuring W3 cache. Believe me my pingdom test increased from 66 to 80 and my Google page speed increased from 68 to 88.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. A few of the written selections above are different than what the 0.php install file brings in. For example in the JS Minify settings you wrote “Embed Type – Non-blocking using defer” but the import file has “Non-Blocking using JS”. There were some differences in Browser cache as well. I am wondering which is the latest and correct method to use? Thank you.